The season closer for Mile Zero Dance’s Dirt Buffet Cabaret will be something special indeed. Securing the estimable talents of multidisciplinary artist Mustafa Rafiq as curator, they’ve once again assembled a crew of likeminded artists for an evening of anything goes, drawing from music, art, poetry, and film.

“I was alone humming this Indian song I grew up listening to and I realized this song had a blues progression to it that I could sing with a Jimmy Reed kind of feel. I recorded it on my first album just to test the waters and a lot of people liked the feel of it. The blues feel made it accessible and the alien singing (in Hindi) made it exotic.” — Aki Kumar

Nature Of is feeling extremely lucky. Not only is the Edmonton four-piece having their album recorded, mixed and manufactured for free — it’s being co-produced by
, engineer on Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, with an even greater role on the National’s Trouble Will Find Me, where he was engineer, associate producer and mixer.

For Liam Cormier, it’s all about the relationship between band and fan.
“It’s amazing when something I write that has such personal meaning to me can mean something completely different to someone else,” the lead vocalist for Cancer Bats muses over the phone from Brighton, England, where the four-piece punk-metal unit are preparing for another packed show on their current tour.

It’s a miracle that The Eagles are even together at this point.
Lawsuits, break ups, and band fist fights are now lore for the California country-rock pioneers, and they’re back on the road minus founding member Glenn Frey, who passed away back in 2016.

It begins with a little Russian-American alliance! Moscow-born, classically-influenced indie musician Regina Spektor is the first name in for this year’s Edmonton Folk Music Festival, her debut on the hill.